r except possibly the night clerk or a gendarme.
And they would look upon him only as something of a nuisance. It is
really pathetic--the depths of misery into which a healthy man may, in
such a mood, plunge himself.

All around him the dark, silent city, asleep save for the night clerks,
the gendarmes, the evildoers, and the merrymakers. And these last
would only leer at him. If he did not join them, then it was his fault
if he lay dying alone.

"Is she in there now?" Monte called to the nurse in the dark.

"Certainly, monsieur. But I thought you were sleeping."

No, he was not sleeping; but he did not mind now the pain in his
shoulder. She had announced herself as his fiancee. Well,
technically, she was. He had asked her to marry him, and she had
accepted. At the time he had not seen much farther ahead than the next
few minutes; and even then had not foreseen what was to happen in those
few minutes. The proposal had given him his right to talk to Hamilton,
and her acceptance--well, it had given Marjory her right to be here.

Curious thing about that code of rights and wrongs! Society was a
stickler for form. If either he or Marjory had neglected the
preliminaries, then he might have lain here alone for a week, with
society shaking its Puritan head. This nurse woman might have come,
but she did not count; and, besides, he had to get shot before even she
would be allowed.

Now it was all right. It was all right and proper for her, all right
and proper for him, all right and proper for society. Not only that,
but it was so utterly normal that society would have frowned if she had
not hurried to his side in such an emergency. It forced her here,
willy-nilly. Perhaps that was the only reason she was here.

Still, he did not like to think that. She was too true blue to quit a
friend. It would be more like her to come anyway. He remembered how
she had stood by that old aunt to the end. She would be standing by
her to-day were she alive. Even Chic, who fulfilled his own
obligations to the last word, had sometimes urged her to lead her own
life, and she had only smiled. There was man stuff in her.

It showed when she announced to these people her engagement. He did
not believe she did that either because it was necessary or proper.
She did it because it was the literal truth, and she was not ashamed of
the literal truth in anything.

"Is Mademoiselle Stockton sitting up--there in the next room?